David Yates to Direct DOCTOR WHO Film

November 15, 2011

Feature film of the Time Lord officially in development.

‘Harry Potter’ helmer David Yates has been tapped to direct a feature film of ‘Doctor Who,’ with plans to turn the iconic sci-fi series into a big screen franchise. The project is being developed with Jane Tranter, head of L.A.-based BBC Worldwide Productions.

Talking to Variety, the director said, “We’re looking at writers now. We’re going to spend two to three years to get it right. It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena. The notion of the time-travelling Time Lord is such a strong one, because you can express story and drama in any dimension or time.”

Yates states that film will take a fresh approach to the material and will not follow on from the current TV series, “Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat have done their own transformations, which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch.”